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The 'School for Modesty and Humility': Colonial American Youth in London and Their Parents, 1755-1775 Author(S): Julie M. Flavell Source: the Historical Journal, Vol

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The 'School for Modesty and Humility': Colonial American Youth in London and Their Parents, 1755-1775 Author(S): Julie M. Flavell Source: the Historical Journal, Vol The 'School for Modesty and Humility': Colonial American Youth in London and Their Parents, 1755-1775 Author(s): Julie M. Flavell Source: The Historical Journal, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Jun., 1999), pp. 377-403 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3020993 Accessed: 14/01/2009 19:16 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Historical Journal. http://www.jstor.org TheHistorical Journal, 42, 2 (I999), pp. 377-403 Printed in the United Kingdom ( i99 Cambridge University Press THE 'SCHOOL FOR MODESTY AND HUMILITY': COLONIAL AMERICAN YOUTH IN LONDON AND THEIR PARENTS, 1755-1775* JULIE M. FLAVELL Universityof Dundee ABSTRACT. Despitethe growing conflict between Britain and her colonies, a metropolitaneducation remaineda popularchoice for thesons of elite colonialAmericans in the late colonialperiod. This articleexplores the attitudesof theyouths themselves,and of theirparents, towards their London educationduring a periodwhen political conflict was engenderinga growing sense of separateness. Americanyouthstypically underwent a statuscrisis upon reaching the metropolis. Their insecurities relatedto theusual pitfalls of genteelLondon life: theprospect of socialisolation and vulgarity, and theopportunitiesfor debauchery. The parents of thesecolonialyouths, however, shared the view of elite Britishparents of theperiod that a publiceducation was a necessarysocial apprenticeship for their children.They regarded personal experience of the metropolis,and familiarity with its social and politicalsystems, as importantattributes for elite colonists.Parental views on the advantagesof a metropolitaneducation for theirsons were unaffected by the imminent breach with Britain. Thestatus crisis experiencedby colonialyouths in Londonwas age-related;their visitingparents were acculturatedto themetropolitan environment. The articleconcludes by suggestingthat the polarized provincialmentality so long attributedby historiansto the colonialpresence in Londonshould be replacedby a moreintegrationist model which reflects the real complexity of therelationship between colonialAmerican elites and theirmother country. I In the two decades before American independence, as Britain's political relationship with her North American colonies was drawing to its close, elite colonial parents persisted in the long-standing practice of sending their sons home to finish their educations. Sons of colonial elites went to the metropolis not only to receive formal education or training, but to acquire refinement and advantageous contacts as well. Naturally they met with mixed success; while some prospered, others succumbed to the pitfalls of genteel London life, whether through isolation, vulgarity, or corruption. But whatever their experiences, correspondence between these youths and their parents reveals an unabated determination to attain a gentleman's education which measured up to metropolitan standards. Education is a significant vehicle for cultural transmission, and adolescents * I wish to thank Bob Harris and Chris Whatley for comments on earlier versions of this article. 377 378 JULIE M. FLAVELL and young adults are the most vulnerable group in the process of transmission of culture from one generation to the next. The presence of the youth of colonial American elites in London is unsurprising,since it is well known that Britain's North American colonies were becoming increasingly Anglicized during the eighteenth century. But in the last two decades of the colonial period the colonies were also engaged in a political conflict with their mother country which prompted them to imagine themselves as a separate people. How far during this period did this tension reflect itself in the responses of elite colonial youths to the metropolitan environment they encountered, and in their parents' advice and solicitudes on their behalf? And what can we conclude from this about elite colonial American attitudes towards their place in the Anglo-American world at the eve of American independence? Historians have long relied upon a core-periphery model to describe the relationship between London and her provinces during the eighteenth century. Within the context of this model, colonial attitudes to the metropolis are often conceptualized in terms of extremes, in which a desire to imitate metropolitan lifestylesis linked with a sense of native inferiority. This inherent conflict in the provincial condition commonly leads to the emergence of a compensatory sense of local pride.' Recently T. H. Breen has given this a neo-whig twist by arguing that it was an aggressive English nationalism emerging in the mid-eighteenth century which actively marginalized the colonists and it was this which provoked the emergence of an American identity.2 Both of these versions of the predicament of the American colonists as provincials within the British empire conform to a long-standing depiction of colonial residentsin London in the late colonial period as increasingly alienated in social, political, and cultural terms from the metropolitan world they encountered.3But these studies have focused on political activists. A study of colonial youths in London and their parents suggests a more complex response to the metropolis on the part of colonial 1 See John Clive and Bernard Bailyn, 'England's cultural provinces: Scotland and America', Williamand Mary Quarterly,3rd ser., iI(i O954) pp. 200-I 3; Richard B. Sher, 'Scottish-American cultural studies, past and present', in Richard B. Sher and Jeffrey R. Smitten, eds., Scotlandand Americain the age of Enlightenment(Edinburgh, I990); Jack P. Greene, 'Search for identity: an interpretation of the meaning of selected patterns of social response in eighteenth-century America', in Greene, ed., Imperatives,behaviors and identities:essays in earlyAmerican cultural history (Charlottesville, I992); Jack P. Greene, The intellectualconstruction of America:exceptionalism and identityfromI492 to i8oo (Chapel Hill, I993), pp. I62-99;John M. Murrin, 'A roof without walls: the dilemma of American national identity', in Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward C. Carter, III, eds., Beyondconfederation: origins of the constitutionand American national identity (Chapel Hill, i987). 2 T. H. Breen, 'Ideology and nationalism on the eve of the American Revolution: revisions once morein need of revising', Journalof AmericanHistory, 84 (1997-8), pp. I3-39. 3 Pauline Maier, From resistanceto revolution:colonial radicals and the developmentof American oppositionto Britain,I765-I776 (New York, I974; first published I972), ch. 8; Michael Kammen, A ropeof sand: the colonialagents, British politics, and the AmericanRevolution (New York, I974; first published I968), pp. I64-9; Paul Langford, 'British correspondence in the colonial press, I 763-I775: a study in Anglo-American misunderstanding before the American Revolution', in Bernard Bailyn and John B. Hench, eds., Thepress and the AmericanRevolution (Worcester, MA, i980), pp. 3I I and ff; see also Paul Langford, 'London and the American Revolution', in John Stevenson, ed., Londonin theage of reform(Oxford, I 977). AMERICAN YOUTH IN LONDON, I755-I 775 379 elites. They saw themselves as occupying a special role as mediators - cultural, political, and social - in the Anglo-American relationship. Therefore, an encounter with London did not necessarily pose such a simple, bipolar choice of adaptation on them. Despite the growing political conflict between Britain and her colonies after I 765, colonial elites continued to groom their sons to occupy this crucial position in the Anglo-American relationship. Elite American colonists had always travelled to the mother country for business, politics, education, and pleasure. The volume of commercial business and politics between Britain and her colonies increased after the middle of the century; so did tourism. Throughout the eighteenth century, British tourism both within Britain and to the European continent rose steadily. This was a result of the consumer revolution and improvements in transport and communication.4 The same trends caused the emergence of 'something like organized tourism' within the colonies after I 763.5 Colonial tourism to Britain and the continent also increased. Published travel literature, which was increasingly available to British readers, was also read
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